What’s that? You wanted more slice of life high school anime in your PSO2? Well you’re in luck, my friend, as we’ll be hitting a number of anime tropes late February including a bath scene! I can feel myself dying inside already.

No, don’t get excited. This isn’t Xie, it’s just someone who looks a whole lot like her!

Between this and the actual anime, I will be honest I’m kind of holding out that some actual plot will happen at some point. Will it be this update? Probably not.

There is the persistent mystery of who ESC-A are (the company behind the magical wireless internet they have over there and the owner of the giant blue tower) and why their technology is having the effect that it is. I mean it’s managing to create life out of fantasy and projecting people’s PSO2 characters into the actual Arks fleet. They’re completely faceless at the moment and it’s kinda wierd… Earth also feels incredibly empty as well for a planet full of people, but then so did Harukotan and Amduscia; Both planets with some form of society and intelligent life.

There’s also the fact that all these wierd Arks are meant to be a recent phenomenon and even our boss, Ulc, doesn’t know where they’re coming from. After the events of Chapter 1, we know that they’re projections of characters played by Earthlings, sure. But the Anime is set 1 year prior to the events of Chapter 1 and there is an Arks operative freely travelling between Earth and the Arks Fleet. What’s up with that? By the way I have a horrible habit of getting invested into stupid plots for stupid things…

Part 2 of the Festa

Part 2 will arrive with a new bingo card as well as a new Limited Quest. The new one will function pretty much exactly the same as the current one with a few minor differences:

It will have some different enemies; essentially the ones that didn’t appear in the previous quest

Nemesis weapons will drop instead of Slave weapons

Caligulas seem to drop!

The new bingo is only marginally better than what we have now if only because it gives 20 gold medals instead of 10. It’s still a fairly weak offering compared to cards of the past. I can’t tell if this replaces the current Bingo card or not given the video doesn’t show the menu navigation to it.

Gathering Info

Gonna just cut to the chase: this system will only be put in place in Forest, Ruins, Coast and Tokyo. That’s it. Why so few areas? Are they going to expand into others later? If so, why so few at first? I don’t get it.

When I first heard about the gathering system I was immediately cynical about it. We’ve had systems introduced to PSO2 in a half-assed state before and then subsequently completely forgotten about. Photon Art crafting is the major one. As I said at the time, “Prove this cynical shithead wrong, Phantasy Star Crew, see your system through!”. They might still! For all I know the Skill Ring and Cuisine systems might turn out to be excellent. They might expand on the system in a timely manner, eventually opening the system across the entire selection of fields. It’s just that starting off with a measly four is for me, kind of worrying. I’d understand if it was a feature that requires a party, as it’s not a good idea to split up the player-base too much for these things. But this is a solo activity…

I don’t really dislike the idea of gathering as if nothing else it does add some purpose in running around on the planets. The Skill Ring system does have some serious potential to be interesting, as it can augment our character skills in various ways if the listed abilities are anything to go by. For reference:

Double Saber Whirlwind Lv. 1

JG Heavenly Fall Lv. 1

JG Sonic Arrow Lv. 1

DB Snatch Lv. 1

KA Gear G Release Lv. 1

Killing Bonus Lv. 1

No, this is not the entire list (could you imagine?). There were some other skills mentioned as I recall, but I don’t know what they were. Who knows with Cuisines, frankly.

Also come on, we have a volcanic cavern peppered with ore veins and a mining facility filled with abandoned materials. We can’t go mining in the actual mine?